New US Brigade Arrives in Baghdad to Bolster Security

The U.S. military says another group of 3700 American troops has arrived in the Iraqi capital, joining U.S. combat units deployed in the city to support the security crackdown launched in mid-February. A military statement Wednesday, said the new brigade, from the northwestern U.S. state of Washington, will help Iraqi security forces clear, control and retain key areas of Baghdad in order to reduce violence. This is the fourth additional combat unit being deployed in Baghdad as part of plans to add some 2800 troops there. Separately, the military said coalition forces detained 12 terrorist suspects during overnight raids in Baghdad and the western Al Anbar province. In other news, Iraqi police say at least eight people were killed when a bomb exploded inside the bus they were riding near the city of Hilla, south of Baghdad. On Tuesday, U.S. and Iraqi officials said they were trying to confirm reports that al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri was killed in a clash among members of his insurgent group. An Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, said intelligence reports indicate Masri was killed in fighting north of Baghdad. But an al-Qaida-linked militant group in Iraq, The Islamic State of Iraq, says Masri has not been killed. Masri, an Egyptian, assumed the leadership of the terrorist group after Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2006.